Alright, so Dr Sotha and I were out late the night before… He said something about the ground powder of a blowfish having the ability to make any and all French women our slaves.
Meeting Dr Sotha and realizing that Peter Lorre had a child with Ingrid Bergman, I knew he was a man of means and powers beyond those of mere mortals. His high pitched sniveling laughter when his pygmy trained chimp dumped the ingredients into the cup of… a goddess…
We sat and watched. We watched and watched, waiting for her lips to dry, for her throat to scratch, for the arid tongue… THEN… Suddenly she downed the drink.
Dr Sotha was quite happy as was his mini-pocket-chimp!
I was horrified. Is this how Sotha captures his women? Was this how Peter Lorre got Ingrid Bergman? Was I going to witness Sotha with an insanely beautiful French Babe skin the naked snake?
I was frozen in a Jack Kamen stare, beads of sweat frozen to my boulderish brow.
Suddenly Dr Sotha motioned for the Vixen to bring us a plate of fromage… Like the stuff the moon’s made of kiddies… And as she bent over to set the plate down, he reached into her purse and pulled out a pass for THE MAN WHO WAS NOT THERE… An invite… a sacred parchment… That which Harry needed to attend.
You see, Dr Sotha had a badge, I did not. But then I could see LORD OF THE RINGS footage, and he could not… so life sucks a bit for each of us.
We left and headed back over to the OLYMPIA 2 screening room… lined with it’s leather seats and curved screen… I had watched THE LORD OF THE RINGS footage in this very room mere hours before. This room has great karma.
The room began filling up. Apparently, I overhear that this is the very first time outside of the Coen Brothers’ own control that this film was being screened.
OHMYGODI’MABOUTTOSEEANEWNEVERBEFORESEENCOENFILM!!!!
I’m sitting there… Center… Awaiting with great anticipation: the first Black & White Coen Brother Film. What would it be like? How would it start?
On a Barber Pole. Black and White spiraling for an infinity… Corkscrewing through our lives. Ok, maybe I’m reading into it here, but it is a lovely opening shot, especially the camera tilts…
When the film finished, there wasn’t a sound. No claps. No cheers. Nothing. I sat there, utterly convinced that the film had just bombed at CANNES… People walked out as the credits rolled, and I looked at Sotha, who had that blowfish powder snort look on his face.
I just started spilling love for the film everywhere. It felt as though I was the only one for whom the movie was made. That’s my favorite type of movie too. The movie that you fight for in arguments… The one that you know that everyone else will be wrong about.
I was all set to explain that not only is it a perfect film noir… but a perfect satire of the genre told with an absurdist spin that just killed me.
Have you ever watched Hitchcock’s THE WRONG MAN? In a way, that’s the style of this film. It’s about how regular the irregular can come and go.
It is about how wrong it is that a Barber dream of being a Dry Cleaner!
And that.... brothers and sisters.... let me tell ya, it is a very wrong thing.
The same sort of wrong that a boy wanting a Red Ryder BB Gun with a Compass in the stock can be. We all know he’ll shoot his eye out!
Well here, the rules of Film Noir means that nobody that is unjust can go unpunished. And Punishment is a bitch in this film.
The last three Coen Brothers have further pioneered their adventure into the Theater of the Absurd. A place where people behave as the Coen’s make them. Where the world operates as the Coens say.
Billy Bob Thornton plays the best ordinary crooked type since Henry Fonda in THE WRONG MAN. That sort of pacing and emotional range. And just like with that film, Thornton's performance will surely go unappreciated by many in this world of film goers.
The film has a whole variety of actors and actresses that we know from the Coen world. All of them…. Wonderfully bizarre and strange and… off… off in that Coen way. Ya know?
For example no character is just simply… what they are, they are always more. Billy Bob is not just a Barber, but he’s also well… a type of barber. The type that doesn’t talk, the type that does smoke… Now he doesn’t talk, but to us, he talks non-stop. He’s continually talking, but telling us he doesn’t like to talk, and he doesn’t, but you’ll see… ummm… hear I mean.
Frances McDormand… she’s the housewife/bookkeeper at a department store. But well, she’s more, I suppose… She has another life altogether and in a way… How all these people have different lives or want different lives… well it all impacts rather brutally.
I really don’t want to describe the film to ya, not because I can’t, but because you should experience it for yourself.
In a way, the film is a bedtime story of a film noir as told by MAD Magazine.
The cinematography by Roger Deakins is hypnotic…
The score by Carter Burwell is like some sort of beautiful sleepy music. That really is the best way to describe it… it feels like the music to calm to, to ease out with, to be at peace with… ya know?
This film is made for those that like to read a pulp novel in a porch swing sipping lemonade and watching butterflies landing upon the honeysuckle. Ok, maybe that’s a particularly small audience… Sure that may not be you, but as someone that sips lemonade in a porch swing watching butterflies and honeysuckle while reading pulp novels… I CAN SAY WITH CERTAINTY I LIKE IT!
I hope you enjoyed the pics and the clips…
